A family member was there and is claiming that over a million people attended. Most reports I saw reported tens of thousands. Is there an accepted source for crowd sizes in Washington DC?
Like most facts these days, even numbers are politically biased. It was probably around 70,000. I’d like to see the breakdown of who was offered what to go. Also, they did leave trash behind and use other government paid services while engaging in this event.
The 538 article above is about as good as you’ll get for an estimate.
There were a number of conservative blogs that were also floating a fake picture of the event showing a lot more people than there actually were (well, the picture is real but was taken 10 or more years ago…among other things there are buildings there today that are not in the photo).
Pretty silly attempt that was as it is so easily proven fraudulent.
The US. Park Police used to provide an “official” count, but after the Million Man March controversy, they stopped doing so.
Thanks, all.
If I got this all straight, tonight on Hardball, Chris Matthews reported that the event drew 50,000 to 70,000 according to Associated Press, but the event’s organizers quoted AP as saying it drew between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000. If anybody can quote Chris more accurately, please do.
Best real pix I found for crowd estimate are here:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cburgard/2009/09/14/912-the-revolution-has-begun/
Call the filled street 3 blocks long and 60 feet wide, with a block being 528 feet long.
That’s 95,000 square feet.
People don’t pack well into a two square foot area, so no more than 50K in that picture.
Add some thousands for those that showed up early and late, and 70K isn’t a bad estimate.
Just like a fake birth certificate …
You’re saying only odd numbers are free from bias? 
I remember reading an article some time ago which argued that there is no such thing as a reliable crowd size estimate for any event, ever. Unless there was some mechanical way to count, such as the event required tickets, or you needed to pass through a turnstile to get in, etc.
Well…they can guesstimate pretty well actually. I doubt someone just eyeballing the crowd could do a good job. However, studies of pictures can get a fairly good ballpark estimate. As was done above you can simply figure out the area covered by a sea of people then do some simple math. The average human needs 4 square feet of room to stand in (cite).
It’ll never be exact but certainly an idea can be had.
Using Squink’s numbers above we get near 24,000. I presume more were fanned out other places though not accounted for in Squink’s number.
My guess at the block size could be pretty far off too. That’s hardly a typical inner city/10 block per mile looking area in the pix. Plus, there’s probably a big blob that can’t be seen up by the capital.
Here is an article from Politifact on the crowd size and the false photo.
Another factor in the crowds at the Mall that day was the 24th Annual Black Family Reunion.
From Max Fischer’s article at The Atlantic:
Talk about an odd juxtaposition of gatherings.
I’m reminded of the Far Side with the daycare center next door to the dingo farm…
Why?
Yeah, that could have been it.